Opportunities, Access & Obstacles

Opportunities “You know the No. 1 complaint about school is that it’s boring because the traditional way it’s taught relies on passive learning,” Mr. Noguera said. “It’s not interactive enough.” Pedro Noguera (NYT) I just watched David Warlick‘s K12 Online Conference Keynote: Inventing the New Boundaries. Then I got an e-mail from Kris about an […]

FieldFindr: Using Ning to Connect Teachers to Volunteers

“A portal to Connect Classrooms to the World: Global Citizens can Share Talents and Skills with Students. Teachers can find Global Citizens (Volunteers) willing to help in a field of interest that they are working on in their class.” [*Update: Links to the ning will not work after Aug. 20th, 2010 – See the 1st […]

Digital immigrants or digital natives? A discussion of digital competence… A spectrum, not a dichotomy!

Amy Capelle has started a very interesting discussion in Ning’s Classroom2.0 She asks, “Are they really digital natives?” The discussion there is great! Here is my response: – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – […]

Start with Innovative Schools…

“How can the next president better help small business and entrepreneurs thrive?” That was the question that US Senator and Presidential Candidate Barack Obama asked on LinkedIn. A day later I posted response #1421. Here it is: The definition for ‘Entrepreneur’ came from Google using ‘define: entrepreneur’, but I did not link to it since […]

How to Prevent Another Leonardo da Vinci

… continue teaching school like it is 1890. “Blinding ignorance does mislead us. O! Wretched mortals, open your eyes!” -LEONARDO DA VINCI Here it is from Kris, a 15 year-old former student, “How to Prevent Another Leonardo da Vinci“. I think this post should be mandatory for every student teacher to read before they graduate. […]

The Web2.0 Prophecy: An Adventure

Originally posted: March 13th, 2007 Reflection upon re-reading and re-posting: Until now I have been adding my reflection at the end of these re-posts. However, I thought with this post it should come first. Why? Because it is important that I share the date of the original post before quoting other bloggers who were expressing […]

Marking What Counts and Reporting on Report Cards

“Just because something can be counted, doesn’t mean it counts, and just because something is difficult to count, doesn’t mean it doesn’t count.” Subbaraman Iyer In my first year of teaching, another first year teacher on my team, Ken Andrews, designed a marking system for Humanities (English and Social Studies combined). In his system students […]

Learning Conversations

Learning Conversation_ Part I It was refreshing to hear Maureen Dockendorf, our staff development co-ordinator, (Director of Instruction), speak at our Building Leadership Capacity (BLC*) series introduction. She encouraged us to become ‘intellectual companions’ that enter into ‘learning conversations’. The part I liked most about her talk was the direction of the conversation. She spoke […]